Chase online banking downtime estimate now at 24 hours

I’m seeing more reports that put the outage starting earlier than our first reports.

According to this tweet, Chase was down at 7 am PT/10 am ET yesterday and this one puts it at around 2 pm PT/5pm ET yesterday.  Our best guesstimate then is that Chase has been down for up to 24 hours.

Update: 9:15 am PT/12:00 pm ET:  Just saw a tweet claiming Chase’s website has been down for three days.  While I don’t think it was down for everyone for three days, this might be an indication that they were having sporadic problems days before yesterday’s outage started.

Chase online banking down for 14 hours now

I’ve been updating the original post on this story regularly.  Here is an update for those of you following on RSS and Twitter.

Chase’s online banking has been down since around 4 pm PT/7pm ET yesterday, 14 hours so far.  Originally, they put up a message that they were down for scheduled maintenance but around 12:30 am PT/3:30 ET probably realized that was fairly unbelievable and changed the message on their main page to reflect the more unplanned nature of the outage. We have not received reports yet on whether this is affecting their other banking operations.

Stay tuned.

Chase online down again – UNSCHEDULED!

Chase online appears to be experiencing some unscheduled downtime again, despite what their website says.  I just received this from a reader:

9-13-2010  9:45 p.m (central time?)

Online Banking for Chase customers has been disrupted, again, for the second time in as many weeks.

This outage has been ongoing for well over two hours thus far.

No previous mention of this outage was posted on Chase.com’s main page and no e-mail was sent to Chase Online’s customer base informing them of any “scheduled maintenance.”

Interestingly, the notification message at https://chaseonline.chase.com has changed during this outage to try and classify this OUTAGE as “scheduled maintenance.”

Funny, you can only contact Chase’s online customer service by first LOGGING INTO YOUR ACCOUNT.  This activity is instantly greeted with the same “This website is temporarily unavailable” page.

I have e-mailed the editors over at The Wall Street Journal.  We’ll see if they decide to pick-up this story and run with it or if they let Chase’s flack tell them it was a planned outage for “system maintenance.”

How long will this Outage last?  Will this continue into normal business hours tomorrow?  How long will Chase customers be inconvenienced this time?  Does Chase care?  Do Chase’s shareholders care?

Stay tuned…

According to our reader, this started around 6 pm Pacific time on a weekday, a highly unlikely time for a scheduled maintenance.  Once again Chase is not giving us the straight story.

Update 11:50 pm. According to comments we’ve received, Chase was down as early as 4 pm, making this about an 8 hour unscheduled outage so far.  The image on Chase’s website (see above) claims this is due to “scheduled maintenance” but the image itself is called “defaultHomeOutageImage.gif”.  Looks like the Chase website developers are a little more honest than they should have been.

JPMorgan Chase’s economic prognostication

JPMorgan Chase’s senior economist commented recently that he believes the economic recovery is on track.  As part of the justification for this belief, Chase gives this information:

Robert F. Ryan, Chase region executive for western New York, said the bank is seeing greater use of commercial credit by clients. It means businesses are ramping up spending and investing, he said, a positive economic sign.

I do see one small problem with that.

Chase has been hounding ordinary non- business customers for a while now to switch from regular credit cards to their Ink credit card, a professional business card.  As many small-business owners know, much small-business financing is done through credit cards.  Small businesses have had a particularly hard time in the recession because banks like Chase cut their credit lines severely, cutting them off from the credit they needed to run their day-to-day operations and in many cases, expand.

I can’t help but wonder if Chase is smart enough to realize that an increase in business credit card use, which they are agressively giving to non-business customers to get around the Credit Card Act of 2009 rules, does not equal an increase in commercial credit.

Hmmm.

Don’t do anything out of the ordinary

Don’t do anything out of the ordinary with Chase Bank, like trying to pay two mortgage payments early like this customer did, so you can go on a long vacation or for any other reason.  Given how bad Chase is in handling the small details, they will probably get it wrong, and in this case they did, charging the customer a late fee.

Can calling Chase executive customer service help you?

This story on Consumerist sure sounds great:

Contacting Chase Executive Customer Service Saves Reader $240/Year In Fees

And indeed, when the customer had a problem, Chase Executive Customer Service was able to solve it.  I recommend everyone try this if they aren’t getting their problem with Chase solved.  Here are some numbers to try:

1-888-622-7547 – extension 4350
847-488-6833, or 888-622-7547 x 6833 – Jessica Pozehl

But if you actually read the story, you find that what caused the problem in the first place is the same old Chase cluelessness.

1. WaMu customer’s account converted to Chase, but there is no exact type of account that matches is WaMu account
2. Chase doesn’t bother contacting the customer to ask them what type of account they want, and just chooses what they think is the closest tone.  Of course, it has fees that his original account didn’t.
3. Customer sees the fees and complains.  Chase agrees to waive the fee for one month (minimum balance fee) but then customer is surprised to find that they’ve actually converted his account into a different type.  Of course they didn’t mention this when talking to him.
4. Customer calls Chase to ask for help, they say they’ll look into it and call him back.
5. No one calls him back.
6. Customer calls Chase to ask for help, they say they’ll look into it and call him back.
7. No one calls him back.

It was at that point he called Chase Executive Customer Service.  Is that really going to be the solution for all of Chase’s mistakes?

Chase teller steals $37k from customers

A JP Morgan Chase bank teller is accused of stealing nearly $40,000 from customers at the Boca Raton branch where he worked so he could pay his bills, according to an arrest report.

Israel Conley, 20, was arrested Aug. 19 on more than a dozen charges of fraud and larceny.

The Boca Raton man had been working at the branch at 240 East Palmetto Park Road for about two months when he allegedly started withdrawing thousands of dollars from customer accounts in July, the report said.

His victims were mostly elderly customers, ranging from 57-years-old to 99-years-old, police said.

On August 16, the branch manager alerted a corporate investigator about some suspicious transactions she came across during an audit. Conley had processed $36,800 in withdrawls, but the customer withdrawl slips were written in the same handwriting, according to the report.

It turns out he forged customer signatures to withdraw large lumps of money from at least six accounts, including a hair extension business, according to the report. He then deposited the stolen cash into his own account at the bank.

Read more …

Chase no help with unemployment payments

It is one thing when banks make mistakes.  It is entirely another thing when they make mistakes and are no help getting them fixed.

Dear Friends,
I would like to share my expereince with all of you and probably you might suggest me what to do with Chase Bank…

I got laid off, on july 16,2010 filed for unemployment, which approved and first installment of money deposited in my account before JULY 30TH 2010 in form of direct payment card, which is normally being issue by Chase PAYMENT CARD DEPT.

I called CHASE PAYMENT CARD 1-877-221-1634(as per labor dept’s web site)between July 20 to August 11, (Including today) more than 25 times…
Allmost everyday…. what chase staff does?do u know…. you would get connected and would be put on hold for hours and hours untill they would close for the day….or you get tired and give up…

I called almost everyday…in last 15 day, waited for atleast 2 hours everytime…only two times chase customer care specialist came on phone to inform me there would not be sending any card to me as there in no instructions from labor department.

I have confirmed with labor depart at leat 10 times, that I have been approved for UI and money has been deposited in my acct., which can be verified by visiting labor depart’s web site too, and I must have been received my payment card by now.  It has passed more than 3 weeks.

But chase bank, their specialist and their system has no information and do not want to send me any direct deposit card. first of all there phone number 1-877-221-1634 is big headache… nobody picks up phone , customer can wait for hours and hours…. they don’t care..

Today, on August 11, 2010 1 HAVE BEEN WAITING ON 1-877-221-1634 since last 2 hours and 15 minutes . I have started my call at 2: 50 p.m. and my watch is showing me time 5 :15 p.m. now, nut no luck…. nobody is picking up the phone…..so .forget about any help from them… even if it is your money….

Does any one have ANY IDEA HOW TO DEAL WITH THIS CHASE BANK?

Thanks…..

Read more …